An “opened up” support package to help Islanders on low incomes pay council tax was approved at a major Isle of Wight Council meeting yesterday (Wednesday).
County Hall’s Full Council opted to go ahead with the Local Council Tax Support (LCTS) Scheme 2025/26 and continue the council’s Exceptional Hardship Fund, presented by deputy leader and cabinet member for housing and finance, Cllr Ian Stephens.
Cllr Stephens’s plan maintains the current LCTS framework, which helps people with up to 75 per cent of their tax bills, apart from ‘six small changes’ to the way in which support is calculated for each claimant.
The Exceptional Hardship Fund can give Islanders in extreme financial hardship additional support payments on top of LCTS for a limited period of time.
Cllr Stephens previously described his plan as an “opened up” scheme which includes an “improvement”.
He said the Alliance administration had attempted to be as “generous as we possibly can”.
The representative for Ryde West said:
“There are existing financial pressures on the council as well as forecast demand pressures which need to be addressed within the council’s budget.
“It’s likely the council’s savings requirements will need to rise from one million pounds to three as a result of unfunded cost pressures in social care.
“We also have to recognise the need for residents to have financial stability during these difficult times with the cost of living crisis, energy price increases and more residents being moved onto Universal Credit from existing benefits.
“We’ve consulted on the proposed scheme over an eight week period, Island-wide, throughout the summer.
“This consultation also sought views of town, parish and community councils and the majority agreed the proposed scheme should be the option adopted.”
Cllr Andrew Garatt, representative for Parkhurst and Hunnyhill, said:
“It has been very good to see that we have made very good progress to restore the amount of support from 65 per cent up towards 80 per cent.
“In many senses, this is a sad moment in that we have not got back to 80 per cent which is where we really need to be.”
Only Cllr Geoff Brodie, representative for Pan and Barton, voted against the plan.
During a brief interval outside the council chamber, he explained his opposition:
“This year we’ve been bounced into it. It’s not a perfect paper whatsoever, at all.
“We’ve been told we can’t amend it because there’d have to be a new consultation.
“We did that last year quite comfortably – there was no need for an extra consultation and the amendments went through. There was a big fuss about it.
“This year we’ve been advised by the monitoring officer we can’t amend it – increasingly on this council officers seem to lead the way rather than councillors.
“If we’d had the opportunity to amend it, I would have liked to have moved towards 80 per cent if at all possible. But we’re not allowed to do that – increasingly there’s no democracy in local councils.”
County Hall works out levels of LCTS according to residents’ weekly income and household.
Approved changes include replacing the current earnings disregard with one standard earnings disregard of £45 per week, disregarding the childcare component of Universal Credit and disregarding in full any Post Office Compensation Scheme payments from the calculation of LCTS.
LCTS was first introduced in April 2013 as a replacement of a previous central government council tax benefit system.
UK government funding for council tax support has decreased each year since its introduction, according to a council report signed by Cllr Stephens.
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